"The Black Rocket has very mean eyes," Alec said thoughtfully. "I think Mr. Cork needs to bring him down a peg. I need to think about this."
Thomas Malcombe listened to brother and sister discuss the Black Rocket-whatever sort of racing cat that was. He liked that name, it was quite menacing. He'd seen Mr. Cork, his gold and white body stretched out, all muscled and long in the sun, with just a bit of shade over one leg from one of Mrs. Sherbrooke's rosebushes.
He'd never had a cat, even when he'd been a boy. There were the barn cats, feral, all of them good mousers.
"Lord Lancaster, how nice to see you. Do you like thin ham slices? They're Cook's specialty. Do join us for luncheon."
He turned to see Mrs. Sherbrooke coming around the side of the vicarage. "Good day, Mrs. Sherbrooke. I merely came to see if Rory was well enough yet to train with the racing cats. I have no wish to intrude."
Mary Rose took his hand. "You saved my son's life, my lord. I want you to intrude until you are quite tired of all of us. Do call me Mary Rose."
Meggie overheard this and nodded vigorously as she joined the two of them. "Thomas, welcome. I'm delighted you could visit. The last time I saw Rory, he was climbing the trellis that divides Mary Rose's hydrangeas from her daffodils, the one with the red climbing roses on it."
Mary Rose's eyes nearly crossed. "Oh no, tell me you made that up, Meggie! Oh goodness, he can't. That trellis isn't all that sturdy. I swear that as of right now, I will no longer look at him and thank God endlessly. No, I will pull my resolve together and swat his bottom. Well, perhaps if he is more than two feet from the ground I will swat him. My lord, I will see you in the dining room in no more than five minutes. Rory! Get down off that trellis!"
And Mary Rose was gone, holding her skirt up to her knees and running toward the east side of the vicarage.
Meggie grinned after her. "This is a good sign. She's been hovering over him, so afraid he will stop breathing again."
"Being hovered over doesn't sound like a bad thing," Thomas said.
Meggie grinned. "Hovering in this case means she's always petting him, kissing him, squeezing him, stuffing food down his gullet, driving the little boy quite distracted, a very independent little boy, let me add."
"You mean you made that trellis story up to get your mother back on an even keel?"
"I wouldn't call it precisely a lie," Meggie said. "Perhaps Rory was looking longingly at the trellis. Now, I am delighted you came to visit. Cook's ham slices are so thin you can see yourself through them. No one knows how she manages it and everyone is always lurking about to watch when she slices the ham. Come along now. You needn't worry that she will try to poison you. The only person she ever mutters about is Mr. Samuel Pritchert, my father's curate."
"The very dour man who never smiles even when he eats a bite of apple tart?"
"That's the one."
"He's in a bad way."
"Yes. But do you know, he has but to look at someone, and that someone will spill his innards to Samuel. My father thinks it's amazing."
"I don't believe you."
She just laughed, took his hand, and pulled him toward the vicarage door. They heard Mary Rose yelling at Rory, who had, evidently, climbed the trellis, because she was telling him that she was going to swat him but good when she got him down from that great height. Goodness, he'd climbed at least eighteen inches and he deserved a good swat.
"That," Meggie said, "makes you wonder about the nature of deception, doesn't it?"
Jeremy's visit the following Wednesday was unannounced, thank God, or Meggie would have been an incoherent bundle of nerves. As it was, all she felt was longing and an immense pain at what couldn't be.
Jeremy Stanton-Greville was so happy. So incredibly, blessedly happy. He gushed; he grinned like a fool. He oozed contentment and smugness. He rubbed his hands together, so proud of himself, so pleased with life, so uncaring, so blind, to the one person who would have gladly played Sir Walter Raleigh to his Queen Elizabeth and thrown every cloak she owned at his feet. Thus, just seeing him, knowing he wasn't ever to belong to her, made her want to hide under the stairs and weep, but naturally, she couldn't. She was stoic. She endured, even managed, when a jest nearly punched her in the nose, to dutifully smile.
After an hour, however, Meggie was feeling less and less like bursting into tears when she looked at him. Actually, she wanted less and less for him to stare at her, just her, with regret and nameless hunger in his beautiful eyes. She wanted less and less for him to realize his tragic mistake that would keep them apart forever.
No, after an hour, Meggie was ready to smash him. She began to drum her fingers against the arm of her chair as he talked on and on about his dearest Charlotte, his beautiful, elegant Charlotte, so sweet, so clever-the embodiment of perfection, a flawless example of womanhood. Then he went on to his stud at Fowey. After a while, both the stud and Charlotte sported the same attributes.
Jeremy never stopped talking about either Charlotte and the stud, even after dinner when the adults were finally having tea in the drawing room.
Hour upon hour of his braying went on. Meggie knew it would never end unless someone shot him. She was ready.
His endless braying had become the fifth circle of Hell.
He was still beautiful, of course, no change there, and he still made her heart sigh and ache, but enough was enough. To keep her mouth shut, Meggie moved to the piano and played vigorously, to drown out his endless praise of himself and what he himself had found and fashioned. But he just didn't stop. Her father looked mildly amused, and to Meggie's eye a bit distracted, and she knew he was likely composing next Sunday's sermon while he was the perfect host. Mary Rose was constantly patting Jeremy's hand, as if to congratulate him on his brilliance, perhaps to keep herself from slapping him silly.
Meggie's limber fingers ran the last Scarlatti arpeggio, hit the last cord, perhaps too forte, since she used quite a bit of muscle, but it didn't matter. She waited just a moment to see if perhaps the conversation had shifted to someone besides perfect Charlotte or the perfect stud.
It hadn't.
Meggie said finally, in a very loud voice as she rose from the piano stool, "How are Uncle Ryder and Aunt Sophie?"
Jeremy, who been detailing every improvement he'd made on the stud-in only three months, mind you-and the plans he had for Leo, said, startled, "What? Oh, they are just fine, Meggie." He grinned, and Meggie felt her heart lurch. Well, blessed hell. "Yes, Ryder tells me the Sherbrooke boys have quite taken over Oxford. He says that when a letter arrives from Grayson, he's loathe to open it, fearing the worst." Now his grin turned fatuous. "I know you love to ride, Meggie. Did I tell you how much Charlotte adores this one mare I bought for her, a beautiful bay mare with a white blaze on her nose and white fetlocks. She is as lovely a mare as Charlotte is a woman. I will breed her, naturally. Her name is Dido, so fitting, don't you think?"
"No," Meggie said. "To escape her husband, Dido built a funeral pyre, stabbed herself, and threw herself on it."
He paused a moment, frowning. "I thought she founded Carthage, something both the mare and Charlotte will do, that is, they will both found a dynasty."
"She did, then she stabbed herself."
"Hmm," said Jeremy, "now that I think about it, I'm not certain that I should allow Charlotte to ride all that much now, since she is carrying my child."
"It is her child too," Meggie said, her voice rising an octave. "She's the one doing all the work."
"Well, yes, but she tells me over and over that she is having this child for me and that it will be a boy because that is what I want." He gave her a brainless self-satisfied grin.